Taking a break from De Oerwereld, we return this week to an artist who's probably been a little under-appreciated. Eleanor 'Ely' Kish produced her most important work in the 1970s and early 1980s, and a great deal of it is gathered together in Dale Russell's hefty An Odyssey In Time: The Dinosaurs of North America. It's a beautiful book, and one that is truly brought to life (as Russell acknowledges) by Kish's stunning paintings, even if time has not been kind to the way that many of the animals have been restored. Now don't get me wrong - I wish to make it very clear that I consider Kish's work to be truly masterful. This particularly applies to the reconstructed palaeoenvironments that the animals inhabit; not only did Kish take the task of including the correct flora very seriously, the worlds depicted in her work are frequently breathtaking in scale and detail. In short, they are utterly believable. Kish also paid keen attention to composition and technique, such that - as with all the best palaeoartists - her work stands proudly as art for its own sake, even without considering the palaeontological element. All of that said, show someone a '70s or early '80s Kish dinosaur these days and the first thing they'll say is "Holy crap, that's skinny!". Kish's restorations represent one of the most extreme faces of what's come to be known as 'shrink-wrapping' in palaeoart - that is, the animals are little more than skeletons with dust sheets thrown over them. Indeed, the above piece - depicting an Apatosaurus pair crossing a mud flat - was even used by Darren Naish in his All Yesterdays presentation to exemplify the 'shrink-wrapping' style. It's easy, here, to appreciate the beauty of the landscape, and the skillful creation of moonlit reflections in the shallow waters of this peaceful delta - but, to modern eyes, the emaciated sauropods are jarring and horrific. 'Zombie dinosaurs', indeed. Of course, it's always important to remember the era in which works were produced. Such ultra-skinny dinosaurs may well have been an over-reaction to the lumpen, lardy 'evolutionary failures' that had dominated palaeoart for decades; in Kish's case, it might also have been down to the scientific advice she was being given at the time (although I've only heard that one on rumour!). Whatever the case, it's perhaps most important to note the rigorous approach to restoration that Kish employed - an approach that contrasted with even the best of the 'classic' palaeoartists (although Burian did try, using what limited resources he had available to him). The skins of her dinosaurs might adhere too closely to their skeletons, but at least the skeletons themselves adhere closely to their real counterparts. Naturally, there are cases in which one can justifiably portray a skeletal dinosaur - and I'm not only saying that as a cheap joke with regard to the Diplodo-corpses above. Scroll up a little, and you will notice that Kish's Massospondylus are tragic, doomed wanderers in a vast desertscape that is utterly barren, save for the faintest glimmer of water in the distance. The scene invites us to imagine these two desperate, starving dinosaurs wandering for days over the dunes in search of a water source. They might even then be too skinny (they do need room for their internal organs), but at least their painfully thin appearance makes sense to a contemporary viewer. Those corpses aren't bad either... On other occasions, Kish's work has aged better than it might have scientifically because the animals are not the focus. Show the above painting to someone who isn't palaeontologically inclined, and they'll probably only notice the astonishing realism and beauty of the shoreline at first, in spite of the sauropods ("Pleurocoelus") milling around casually in the background. Kish broke new ground in making dinosaurs a component of a wider environment and ecosystem in her art. The history of hadrosaurs in palaeoart isn't explored all that often (now there's an idea...), but their depiction has gone from tubby tripods, to more slimline bipeds/quadrupeds, to more fleshy and bulky quadrupeds and occasionally outright porkers. As one might expect, Kish's Corythosaurus represent the second stage in that evolution; they are so thin as to be near-unrecognisable next to today's much more massive-looking restorations, but represent a leap forward from the embarrassing, web-handed 'duckbills' of the previous generation. Dale Russell's influence on this beautiful bayou can be felt with the Troodon stage left, which bears more than a passing resemblance to a certain well-known model. The sharp-eyed will also spot a fragment of long-dead tyrannosaur hanging out in the bottom left. Speaking of hadrosaurs, someone - like me - who grew up with the palaeoart of the 1990s would be hard-pressed to recognise these creatures as Maiasaura, such is the extent of the shrink-wrapping. One especially peculiar, but inevitable result of shrink-wrapping that Kish does not hide is that the pubic bones protrude to the extent that the animals could seemingly use them as crude stabbing weapons. Still, the painting makes wonderful use of light and shade, as does... ...Kish's depiction of two Dryptosaurus engaging in a mating ritual. These two might just be the nadir of the corpsetastic, Tim Burton, heroin chic approach to dinosaur restoration, but the scene behind them is a mind-kersploder. It's almost possible to feel the warmth of the setting sun, and to hear the cries of the flocking birds as they fly to their evening roost. The composition here, too, is uncommonly superb for a work of palaeoart. In spite of how unsettling I might find the wiry tyrannosauroids in the foreground (is anyone else reminded of the Jurassic Park Coelophysis toy?), this is one of my favourite pieces in the book, simply for its dazzling display of artistic skill. Some dinosaurs, of course, are just too chunky to shrink-wrap, and Tyrannosaurus is surely one of them. Sure, you can choose to display every facet of its skull through the skin in ghoulish detail, but there's no getting away from its absurdly massive, beer keg chest and enormous hips and thighs. Here, again, we see Kish's skill in composition (and Niroot is quite envious of the well-executed palm tree). This is also one of the few Kish pieces to feature dinosaurs in 'action' poses - never mind the fact that T. rex is busy reducing Edmontosaurus to delicious, filleted meaty strips. They'd be finger lickin' good, if only it could lick its fingers. The same principle can also be applied to ankylosaurs - the spiny walking coffee tables of the Mesozoic are simply too wide to be restored in a truly anorexic fashion. While the browsing Sauropelta are quite fetching in themselves, I again regret not being able to present the entire picture here, which is far more expansive and lovingly created than this detail suggests. I guess the only course of action is for you all to find a copy of the book... Eleanor Kish, then. Come to ogle the super-skinny dinosaurs, but stay for the masterful artistry. We've covered Kish on three occasions before, and I may well return to An Odyssey In Time somewhere down the line - not only to feature more glorious Kish artwork, but because it also features that perennial favourite, the 'Dinosauroid' (nothing to do with Kish, I might add). As for next week...there'll be something completely different!

Beverly Halstead accomplished rather a lot in his life; geologist, palaeontologist, holder of professorships at universities around the worl...

Dinosaurs might not have ruled the Earth in the 20th Century, but they knew how to stand still and bide their time for their return. In this series of snapshots by the terrific Robert E Jackson, we see statues of dinosaurs throughout the US. Some were taken at the Dinosaur Park in Rapid City, … Continue reading "Vintage Snapshots of Dinosaurs"

Who asked for one more round of Predatory Dinosaurs of the World? No? Well you're getting it anyway. If it's any consolation, you might not have expected to see Dimetrodon and Eryops showing up in a book with such a title, and yet here they are. Pesky Dimetrodon, always sticking its giant fin in where it isn't welcome. Naturally, these Permian beasties appear in a section providing the background and overall evolutionary history of theropod dinosaurs, a chapter replete with wonderful illustrations like this one. It's intriguing to see Greg Paul take on animals other than the ones we're used to seeing, and the results are predictably very lean-looking, although it's lovely to see Dimetrodon being so energetic (and definitely not marking its territory, no matter what Thomas Diehl might think over on the Fezbooks). This is also a notably richly illustrated Permian scene, with an assortment of fauna swarming over an imposing forest - as opposed to a blasted sand dune with a few generic fronds scattered here and there. Many readers will recognise the above piece from Paul's 2010 Field Guide to Dinosaurs (second edition coming soon!). Aside from the forelimbs, it's aged rather well - Paul's style probably suits Coelophysis more than any other dinosaur (after all, it's an animal that has literally been rendered as pair of rubber-coated pipe cleaners before). Note both the Bakkerian neck plumes and mixture of 'robust' and 'gracile' morphs. It remains an exciting and energetic piece, as a marauding gang of unnervingly gangly, long-necked theropods round a bend to confront the viewer. On to the Jurassic, and a reclining Allosaurus (Mark Witton would approve) watches Camarasaurus, Diplodocus and Stegosaurus around a watering hole. This piece is all the more effective for presenting the scene from a human's eye view, as if Paul drew it from life (which Mark notes is a very effective palaeoart technique in Rec-a-Rep). It's nicely composed, with a good variety of animal life on show (there's more than just dinosaurs here), and the context is entirely naturalistic, recalling layabout lions eyeing giant African herbivores as they gather to drink. If there's one bothersome aspect of this, it was what Niroot pointed out to me - namely, that the way the Diplodocus' tails pivot up into the air is a little strange. They're on a slope, sure, but why does the tail stick up to oppose the head and neck, like a see-saw? Wouldn't it just stick out behind, given that they have a solid quadrupedal base to stand on? Nitpicking, though - this is a fantastic piece, one of the best in the book. As the Late Cretaceous draws in, so we are treated to rampaging tyrannosaurs making a nuisance of themselves. Again, we have a wonderful mix of herbivore behaviours. The less well-defended hadrosaurs Kritosaurus and Hypacrosaurus scatter to the left, dodging Edmontonia (just visible on the scan) which is notably less concerned. Meanwhile, the ceratopsians Chasmosaurus and Centrosaurus act like belligerent, overgrown bovids, confronting the threat and brandishing their horns. It'd be a foolish Daspletosaurus that took on such a foe. Such well considered, exciting pieces like this demonstrate why Greg Paul still deservers a place at palaeoart's top table. Interestingly, the huge pterosaurs shown here are Quetzalcoatlus, and they're much closer to their 'modern' look than many other artists managed at the time (most of whom were, admittedly, busy copying Sibbick's nubbin-headed beast). They share the sky with modern-looking birds. There's some other cool stuff which I haven't featured yet that doesn't appear in the aforementioned chapter (A History of Predatory Dinosaur Success and Failure, and of their Avian Descendants, should you have been wondering), so I'm going to tack it on artlessly here. Here, the frankly quite bonkers-looking Mamenchisaurus hochuanensis is confronted by Yangchuanosaurus shangyouensis, which Paul lumps into Metriacanthosaurus for some reason. One of the allosaurs has sliced some flesh from the sauropod's thigh. Intentionally or not, the two tiny pterosaurs flying past the sauropod's neck are reminiscent of old palaeoart pieces, where they were used for scale - in particular, Zallinger's The Age of Reptiles mural. Having said that, Paul is very keen on busting old palaeoart tropes where appropriate. In Paul's own words, "Far from trying to escape into water for safety, herbivorous dinosaurs were in dire danger if caught by packs of swimming theropods, as is the case with this Apatosaurus louisae, surrounded by Allosaurus atrox [probably just A. fragilis]." It's a classic cutaway that's been imitated many times since. Judging by the signature, it was originally drawn in 1980. One can easily imagine how revolutionary it must have seemed at that time. When not bandying iffy taxonomy and confusing terminology about ('brontosaur' as an alternative term to 'sauropod', as opposed to referring to a particular type of sauropod? Huh?), Paul was often far ahead of everyone else in terms of the quality of his reconstructions. Anomalous vestigial finger aside, his Baryonyx (above) is much better than many others at the time, some of which sported piratical appendages on the end of their arms. I'm sure I've said previously that I'm so very happy that ornithomimosaurs were found to have had a feathery covering. They just make so much more sense with one. Once the more jobbing dino illustrators catch on, and once tight-arse publishers stop reprinting crudely modified Sibbick illustrations from the Normanpedia (31 years young!), we'll finally be rid of the creeptastic, tiny-handed, stilt-legged, prune-skinned monstrosities of the '80s and '90s once and for all. Of course, Greg Paul got there first. GSP was right! Tell the children! ...Except, of course, he wasn't always. I'll leave you with this charming skeletal diagram, depicting a composite therizinosaur transformed into Plateosaurus-meets-Edward Scissorhands. Why would I finish a celebration of Paul's triumphs with this unfortunate guess-too-far? Because I am, in the end, a right bastard. Next time: life-size fibreglass dinosaurs return to LITC, with guest star Dave Hone (for it is he)! Oh, yes.

Thanks to the efforts of reader Ryan DeLuca , today I'll be sharing a really cool piece of dinosaur print ephemera from the 80's: a sticker ...

In my last-but-one Vintage Dinosaur Art post - about three years ago now - I reviewed a book entitled Dreaming of Dinosaurs. While some commented that it wasn't very vintage, others (on Facebook, mostly) noted how its title reminded them of a different book that they treasured as a child - Dinosaur Dream. Well wouldn't you know, I've only gone and procured that one too! And no, as it's from 1990, it isn't very 'vintage' either. However, hopefully this will be forgiven on the grounds that it's really quite beautiful. Both written and illustrated by Dennis Nolan, Dinosaur Dream is the charming story of a young boy's journey back through time, dressed in his snappy red pyjamas and accompanied by his juvenile sauropod friend. Whether or not the trip really was just a dream is, happily, left ambiguous. The boy - Wilbur - is disturbed in the night by a baby apatosaur's approach outside his window, shortly after he has put away his favourite dinosaur book and settled down to sleep. Wilbur's room betrays Nolan's primary paleaeoartistic influences - and they are most definitely vintage. Wilbur not only has a poster of Knight's famous Tyrannosaurus v Triceratops piece on his wall, but an enormous great frieze of the Zallinger Age of Reptiles mural. Anyone who was obsessed with dinosaurs as a child will recognise that fundamental need to have absolutely everything they owned adhere to a prehistoric theme, right down to their duvet cover (I've got to say that my Jurassic Park example didn't quite have the timeless, graphical appeal of this one). If it seems a little odd that a child in 1990 would have a Knight poster on their wall, well, I imagine that's a little nostalgia on the author's part, which I certainly won't begrudge him. When Wilbur first meets the young Apatosaurus, he immediately decides to name his new saurian friend 'Gideon', after Gideon Mantell (which is lovely - I might have felt rather differently had he named it 'Richard'). Rather less cleverly, he decides to try and stash the dinosaur away in a barn with a gaggle of disgruntled farm animals. Realising his error, Wilbur elects instead to try and get the Apatosaurus back to the Jurassic where it belongs, and the two set off on a long walk back in time. At this point, connoisseurs of dinosaur art will have already noted that Gideon has a distinctly retro appearance - rather portly and wrinkled, with inaccurate plantigrade hands and feet and a highly arched, humped back. Nevertheless, Gideon's a very active little beast, not only harassing livestock but easily keeping pace with his smelly mammalian charge, even through thick snow. Retro in appearance, but definitely Renaissance in habits. While wisely keeping their distance from a herd of mammoths, the bumbling pair somehow end up alarmingly close to the business end of a Smilodon, and are forced to clamber up a cliff face to safety. The appearance of the toothily endowed moggy owes much to Knight, but definitely falls on the right side of the 'loving homage/lazy rip-off' divide. The composition of this illustration is beautiful, with Gideon's back and tail forming a wonderful, sigmoid shape opposite the near-geometric peaks of the distant mountains. All right, so Niroot may have pointed that out to me, but the point stands - Nolan is a superb illustrator with a keen eye for an excellently arranged scene. The two go on to find a 'dawn horse' (presumably Eohippus), frolicking atop a suitably picturesque waterfall, and Wilbur realises that they are indeed travelling far, far back in time. Before too long, they pass through the Mesozoic border - thankfully rather lax on security measures to prevent the entry of temporal migrants in nightwear- encountering flocking Pteranodon as they go. While the above illustration may give the impression that the pair are passively observed by Triceratops as they pass, the text describes Wilbur walking up to the sleeping ceratopsians, disturbing them, being charged and making a rather narrow escape. The use of perspective in this picture is wonderful, making ol' Pointyface look suitably massive and slightly sinister, if not a little retro once again. Of course, given Wilbur's predilection for getting into near-fatal scrapes with enormous, bad-tempered prehistoric creatures, it's only a matter of time before he's running for his life while a Tyrannosaurus snaps at his stupid little heels. Sexy Rexy strikes a suitably athletic pose in Nolan's gorgeously lit scene (the sky! Look at the sky! By Bakker's beard, it's beautiful!), but again its loosely interpreted head and rather lizardy limb muscles show off his very old-school influences. Nevertheless, it's difficult to argue with something quite so fantastically painted, and I love the panicked, galloping pose of Gideon. Just as the dino-dream threatens to come to an abrupt and rather gastronomically unsatisfying conclusion, the hapless pair escape into a river... ...only to be hurled straight over a waterfall. While the characters' expressions are priceless, this painting does unfortunately reveal that Nolan really did have no idea where to put sauropod nostrils (thanks to Hugebody McTinyHead on Facebook for pointing that one out. No, I don't make these names up). At last, Wilbur is able to reunite little Gideon with his retrotastic extended family in the Great Valley (maybe). While these humpbacked mountains of flesh are quite comically backward-looking, even for 1990, they are nevertheless possessed of a certain charm, no doubt enhanced by their gormless, perma-smiling faces and pleasant demeanour. A larger-than-usual double page illustration (detail shown above) helps emphasise the sheer size of these nostalgia-tinged brontos, with the entire left hand page being dominated by the Burianesque body of one of the beasts. This is further enhanced by the perspective, which is at Wilbur's level; from here, the sauropod necks crane up very high indeed. Finally, an exhausted Wilbur is given a lift back home by the largest Apatosaurus of the herd, falling soundly asleep in the many folds of its gigantic hump. Another ludicrous-looking dinosaur (who else is reminded of the Dino Riders toy?), but a sumptuous illustration boasting an expertly painted and highly evocative skyscape. It's a fittingly warm conclusion, in every sense, to such a deservedly adored book. Dinosaur Dream really is the cat's snappy red pyjamas.

I just came across a great Mental Floss article by Jill Harness about a series of Depression-era zoo posters that helped put unemployed Illinois and Pennsylvania artists to work under President Roo…

Don Ivan Punchatz

Dinotopia is an illustrated fantasy book series by artist James Gurney that imagines a world in which dinosaurs exist alongside humans. Gurney was

Explore HA! Designs - Artbyheather's 2182 photos on Flickr!

PRICES MAY VARY. OPTIMAL SIZE: This poster fits standard frames snugly and arrives securely packaged for your peace of mind IDEAL GIFT CHOICE: Transform any room's atmosphere, add personality, and breathe new life into spaces with captivating wall art MADE IN THE USA: Our premium poster paper showcases officially licensed art prints from our carefully curated collection, promising visually stunning designs EASY TO DISPLAY: Take your pick from various display options, including tape, putty, pins, hangers, or frames. Consider laminating for creative door signs or versatile dry erase boards DURABILITY DESIGN: The poster's robust construction ensures it not only enhances rooms but also stands the test of time, thanks to its rectangular shape and portrait orientation

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From "Triceratops" by Angela Sheehan, illustrated by John Francis. Published by Ray Rourke Publishing Co., 1981.

It’s very rarely that we get a book on here with a title that really appeals to me, but this has got to be one (even if it’s not quite up there with WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH.) Ori…

Five years ago (wait...what?!), I wrote a VDA post on W.E. Swinton's book on dinosaurs for London's Natural History Museum, which featured a number of artworks by Neave Parker. Professor William Elgin Swinton (for it was he) moved to Canada after his stint at (what is now) the NHM, and in 1965 he wrote the book we're looking at here - Dinosaurs of Canada. Neave Parker had, unfortunately, died a few years prior, but his influence is keenly felt in the illustrations by Paul Geraghty, which are as wonderfully stylised as they are (very) obviously dated. I don't half love a slightly concerned-looking tyrannosaur. This book was sent to me in PDF form by reader Charles Leon (cheers Charles), who mentioned acquiring it from somewhere-or-other on the internet. Judging the book by its cover, it's very obviously a scan of an old library book, so if you know anything more about how it ended up online, please let me know [EDIT: see Charles' comment below]. In any case, it's a notably less, er, wacky read than the earlier BM(NH) book, mostly because Science Marches On and all that. The illustrations, on the other hand, don't show much in the way of scientific progress at all. But they're still lovely. As Niroot noted over on the Fezbooks, the "woodcut or linocut prints" (we assume) are quite a sight to behold, and a notable departure from the norm in a book like this. Geraghty's Gorgosaurus clearly owes a lot to Neave Parker and possibly Zdenek Burian's work. As was pretty normal in the pre-Renaissance era, the animals mostly look as undermuscled as I would if I ever dared go within fifty feet of a gym. That is, except for their thighs, which are bloody enormous. This actually shows that at least some attention was being paid to the animals' skeletons, which indeed make it clear that they did have huge thighs. The need to incorporate this, but also show how 'reptilian' (read: lizardy) they were, results in amusing-looking creatures with massively meaty thighs leading to stick-thin lower legs - like they were doing really specific exercises. Geraghty's Ornithomimus has intriguingly birdlike and very long feet (as well it might) with tarsal scutes, but withered muscles all the same. Perhaps its most intriguing feature is its head, or more specifically its eyes, which appear to bulge out in chameleon-like fashion. In terms of detailing and composition, this Edmontosaurus/Anatosaurus is probably one of the best pieces in the book. However, according to Andrew Stück over on Facebook, "it's a reverse-side image of the Neave Parker splay-legged Trachodon", which I must admit I haven't seen and can't seem to find online (help please). It does remind me of Burian's similarly-posed beast, preparing to run from Tyrannosaurus in one of his more famous paintings. Mirror-image rip-off or no, I do like this stylised take on the creature, awkwardly-jutting fatty thighs and all. Naturally, it's shown emerging from the water in a marshy environment, because after all, various anatomical features of these animals clearly show adaptations to an aquatic life. Per Swinton, "Many hadrosaurs, the so-called 'hooded' forms, had greatly swollen nasal cavities that must have been developed because these dinosaurs habitually lived in water...The hand had four fingers but no thumb and the fingers may have been joined together by skin, making a kind of flipper. The tail was long, muscular and flattened from side-to-side, which it suggests it may have been used for swimming." It all rather reminds me of something that's surfaced again recently. Something about primates with thin hair and subcutaneous fat... It's at this point that I'd like to remind you, dear reader, that this book's title is Dinosaurs of Canada. But here's Stegosaurus anyway. I'm not aware of Stegosaurus remains turning up in Canada (and the book makes no mention of it), but please do fill me in if I'm missing something. In any case, for all the lovingly detailed knobbly bobbly skin patterns, this is a pretty typical mid-20th Century depiction of the animal, even if the raised head is a welcome relief from the 'hurr durr, my brain's the size of a pea' ploughskull restorations that were typical of the period. And finally...Scolosaurus, which definitely did come from Canada. This sprawling, rather short-tailed restoration of the animal will be very familiar to anyone who went to visit some 'life sized dinosaurs' back in the '80s and '90s. It's also a veteran of artwork by Burian, Parker and their countless imitators. For whatever reason, this one omits the tail club completely, and the head is suspiciously turtlelike; nevertheless, the shading and impressionistic foliage is very attractive. Er...that's it. It's quite a short book. Coming up next time...TetZooCon, I hope!

Given that the last book I reviewed was so very bland and predictable (complete with the obligatory post-Normanpedia Sibbickisms), I was very happy to come upon this wonderful, ageing collection of barely held-together cloth boards on eBay. This international edition of Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Animals dates from 1972, but in its original form it would appear to go all the way back to 1959. What with its glorious collection of Zallingerian swamp beasts and Knightian lizard-headed tyrannosaurs (all painted by R F Peterson), it's an absolute treat for fans of truly vintage dinosauriana...even if some of the artwork isn't terribly accomplished. The cover artwork, featuring a truly sinister-looking, beady-eyed allosaur, is probably as good as it gets. It's a marvellous composition, showing off the animal's flowing, reptilian form and evil-looking teeth and claws. There's even room to squeeze in a serpentine retro-sauropod (retropod?) and a couple of temporally displaced Pteranodon on the right, the better to flesh out this alien, prehistoric world. As a piece of palaeoart, of course, it's sub-par - the basic shape of the animal is there, but all the finer details are incorrect and occasionally just plain weird - what's going on with the flattened tail is anyone's guess. However, as a book cover, it's pretty effective. It gets your attention without shoving a slavering maw in your face. Following an introductory chapter detailing the origins of palaeontology, the book is quick to rush through the boring old Palaeozoic. As well it should be. There are a few pages dedicated to lesser creatures like temnospondyls and Dimetrodon (gotta have Dimetrodon!) before we finally reach the origins of the dinosaurs. Whereas modern books would feature the likes of Eoraptor, Herrerasaurus and so on, here poor old Saltoposuchus has to go it alone. Of course, these days Saltoposuchus is regarded as a basal crocodylomorph, and therefore not close to a potential 'dinosaur ancestor' at all, but those were simpler times, see. In any case, as with so many reconstructions of this animal from this period and into the 1970s, the rule that all bipeds must totter around in as upright a position as possible results in a very awkward looking creature indeed. I love his sad face. "Come back, come back!" Dispensing with the usual pleasant plateosaurs, the book immediately brings on the Properpods, starting with an enormously fat and Zallingerian Brontosaurus. A great many of the dinosaurs in this book appear to inhabit the same flat landscape filled with nondescript foliage, although at least that's preferable to an endless desert, I guess. As is typical of the period, the sauropods not only look very corpulent in the illustrations, they are mercilessly mocked in the text, too. The author - Darlene Geis - also wrote The How and Why Wonder Book of Dinosaurs, and employs many of the the same gags here. Geis describes ol' Bronto's comparatively tiny (and, in this case, misshapen) head as the final "ridiculous touch" to top off its preposterous "blimp-like" body. Poor Brachiosaurus, meanwhile, is described (naturally) as some sort of evolutionary misfire, a creature too large to walk around on land for any extended period of time, but also very poorly built for swimming - and therefore prone to just standing around in the water looking glum. "This must have been a dull way to live - even for a dinosaur!" guffaws Geis, exactly as in The How and Why Wonder Book. "In Brachiosaurus, you can see how wasteful and useless great size can be." Just like the wasteful and useless whales, those silly artiodactyl spin-offs of the sea. Such a waste of oil better employed in street lighting. Ironically, Peterson's artwork prominently features a brachiosaur with four feet planted firmly on the ground, where of course it looks far more at home. It's interesting to note the creature's separated toes - I can't help but wonder if this illustration inspired the old Blackgang Chine model (RIP). Such flaws aside, it is definitely one of Peterson's best, and effective in the same way as the cover - it shows off its subject very well, and in this case emphasises the verticality of the beast. Could've done with some taller plants for scale, mind. While creations like the Brontosaurus and Brachiosaurus are familiar-looking products of their time, the book's trip into the Late Jurassic does take a few truly bizarre turns. This Stegosaurus is probably one of the worst I've ever seen. We all expect low-slung hump-backs, but this birdy-beaked, egg-shaped freak is something else. It's as if Peterson once picked up a copy of Life before Man, a funhouse mirror, and several suspicious-looking fungi from a dark corner of a nearby field, and proceeded to sit down and finally get that damn dinosaur book done. I just wish he'd also drawn a skeletal version - can you imagine what that spine looks like? Nothing could possibly out-weird Stego, but Peterson's terrifying Camptosaurus certainly comes close. The body is fairly conventional, of course, but there's no escaping that head, what with its demented swirling eyeball and scissor-like jaws. It's like something from a baffling experimental animation carefully hand-drawn by an obsessive lunatic locked in the basement of a derelict block of flats in the DDR. To stare into its soulless, squidlike gaze is merely to court a pulverising terror from which there can be no escape. Thankfully, Camptosaurus soon gives way to its more derived Late Cretaceous relatives, the hadrosaurs. This "Trachodon" is mercifully generic, and the background and sky are really quite pretty. Unlike a great many artists of the time, Peterson refrains from giving his hadrosaurs webbed fingers - something that the previous owner of my copy of this book thought to rectify. (Thanks to Niroot for spotting that one.) The better of these illustrations - like this one - actually make good use of the simplified background detail in order to emphasise their subjects, and are painterly in a way that we seldom see today. Where "Trachodon" goes, Triceratops will surely follow. Although old grumpychops looks less than happy to be there, there is something serene and calming about the almost impressionistic approach to background detailing - and one can't say that about a great deal of palaeoart. (Must be something about all those weird-looking giant reptiles that people insist on parading all over the place.) The animal's tail is oddly long (the better to drag like a lizard's, perhaps), but this is still a fair reconstruction for the time, vastly superior to the same artist's Stegosaurus. It's always wonderful to see a lone megaherbivore resplendent in its natural environment - must be why I have that a print of that piece by Niroot up on me wall. The two make for an interesting comparison, being essentially the same concept illustrated decades apart. The peace can't last, of course, because Rexy is soon on the rampage. Much as I appreciate the hatching technique, this is still a rather rubbish fight, as the strangely humanoid-legged toothy one is half-heartedly jabbed in the ribs by its squat, lumpen quarry. He should've looked where he was going. Rexy also has a plate all to himself (but of course), in which the Charles Knight influence becomes even more apparent; this is virtually a copy of one of Knight's first ever paintings of the animal. Why, it even has that adorably misplaced eyeball for an extra-lizardy look. Why Peterson opted to copy this one rather than a later, more accurate Knight work is a little puzzling, but at least we get proper digitigrade feet, some lovely high contrast shading and an evocative atmosphere, this time. And finally...to make up for that rubbish Rexy v Triceratopalot fight, here's a classic clash of the Knightian titans. It's a shame that almost everything you see here is now utterly improbable (what, no snake-like plesiosaur necks?), although you can probably expect to see a battle like this in Jurassic World 2. On the other hand, they might shoehorn in an unlikely romance between the two instead. Because there has to be a romance - the focus groups said so. In any case, while this isn't the best version of this scene that I've seen (the best take place amid violent tempests), it has some nice touches. Those piercing orange eyes, for example, and Tylosaurus' mighty green pimpliness. Those were the days...

One of the more obscure finds I've made on eBay, this Dinosaurs isn't a book as such - rather, it folds out like a pamphlet or map, and the illustrations effectively cover two frieze-like spreads. (You can also fold it completely flat, but there's no continuity between the two sides.) Published by Domino Books in 1979, its charming illustrations take us back to a palaeontological world in flux...while erring somewhat on the old-fashioned side. We're not out of the swamps just yet! The illustrations were provided by Denys Ovenden, and naturally form the focus of the 'book' given its format. There's a pleasing warmth and solidity to them, even if some of the anatomy is downright suspect (so where does cover Rexy's neck end and his shoulders begin? It's a problem that seems to plague retro theropods). Given the age of the publication, it's little surprise that many of the animals take on a distinctly Zallingerian air - after all, most of the artwork in popular books of the time did - but a few telling contemporary scientific mores are starting to creep in. Take this scene, for example - for the most part, it could well have been lifted from a book of the '60s, '50s or even earlier. The head-swap ceratopsians seem content to mill about, squatting and chewing on cycads (but of course cycads), and they sport those serenely smooth and glossy heads so prevalent in mid-twentieth century palaeoart. It's the 1970s now, though, so who should pop up in the background but a poster child of the Dinosaur Renaissance (the one without the beard), Deinonychus! Unusually, the mid-sized dromaeosaur is depicted nest-raiding rather than screaming and jumping on top of something; I can only imagine it's because that particular trope had yet to gain ground. This illustration is also an example of the curious tendency for artists to miss the hallux on their dromaeosaur feet, perhaps because they're thinking far too hard about how to draw that more famous digit in its duly raised position. It's a peculiarity that even plagued the Jurassic Park 'raptor' toys. Deinonychus is also one of the few theropods to be shown in a 'modern', horizontal-backed position - the other being Ornithomimus (above), here depicted more as a generic small coelurosaur rather than an ornithomimosaur. Regardless of its proportions, it stands out as an incongruously modern-looking creation among a gathering of very vintage-looking ornithischians, including a highly Neave Parker-esque Polacanthus and a personal favourite of mine, a sprawling, short-tailed Scolosaurus. This artistic incarnation of the animal, though long banished from the pages of kids' dinosaur books, lives on in the form of hideous fibreglass models that pop up in visitor attractions around the world (but mostly, it seems, in the UK). Victoria Arbour harbours a secret love for it, or so I hear. Meanwhile, the Psittacosaurus have an unusually knobbly look about them, and an attention to fine skin details that I really like. While the massive bulk of Stegosaurus and, to a lesser extent, Iguanodon (with a rather dashing row of dorsal spines) dominates this composition, one's eye can't help but be drawn to the two much more dynamic-looking animals depicted in the top right. Although drawn as the croc-line archosaurs they surely were, Ornithosuchus and Saltoposuchus are here desribed by author Barry Cox as 'dinosaur ancestors'. Whatever - it was the '70s. More interesting is the fact that they are so dynamic - which makes me wonder about artistic precedents for depicting pseudosuchian, crocodolymorph etc. etc. archosaurs as seemingly being more fleet of foot than dinosaurs. No need to guess the artistic precedents behind this depiction of Allosaurus, mind you - it's reminiscent of any number of depictions of the animal chewing on a downed sauropod, going all the way back to Charles Knight's, which was based on a mount at the American Museum of Natural History. Of course, in this case the prey item happens to be a Camptosaurus instead, but it's still a very familiar scene. As if to hammer home that this is a Palaeoart Standard, Ovenden even throws in a violently belching mountain. Nothing says 'primordial world' quite like some belligerent geography. Having said all that, the spotty pattern on Allosaurus' flanks is lovely indeed. Gorgeous scalation work, darling. Wonderful attention to detail, too, in the way that the allosaurs' claws are tugging on the thick hide of its victim. Another solid indication that you're looking at old-school dinosaur art is the appearance of animal labelled 'Coelurus'. There's nothing wrong with that, of course - Coelurus is a valid taxon - but the creature seldom appears in art any more. Given that Ornitholestes was long considered a junior synonym of Coelurus, it's likely that many historic illustrations of 'Coelurus' depict that animal instead (which is somewhat better known), and indeed Ornitholestes has more-or-less now replaced Coelurus in its role in palaeoart. Aptly enough, Coelurus here shares a scene with a Euoplocephalus that appears to be a portmanteau of different ankylosaurs (with a dash of retro 'reptilian armadillo' artistic tropes). It's the Archaeopteryx that are most deserving of attention, though, as they are actually remarkably good - in that they're not wearing weirdo lizard masks and their hands actually form part of their wing. Ovenden clearly knew a thing or two more about bird anatomy than many of his contemporaries (and even many illustrators working since). And now for my favourite scene in the whole book (or pamphlet...or whatever). Nothing says 'the Savage World of Long Ago' quite like somebody having their head bitten clean off. For a sauropod to wander out of the water in vintage palaeoart is, of course, certain death, and it's great to see Ceratosaurus taking charge and dealing the damage for a change (rather than cowering in the shadow of that certain 'other' Morrison theropod). The dappled and stripy patterns on the animals here are quite lovely and well-executed, and (unlike in some of the other scenes) attention has been paid to the animals' skeletons - note the blunt-nosed look of the juvenile camarasaurs and the osteoderms and three horns on Ceratosaurus. It's also worth noting that the text describes how the sauropods were, in fact, well adapted for a life on land - a sign of how the times were changing. Disappointingly, Rexy doesn't get to indulge in such violent, bloody savagery, in spite of being so large, famous, and sexy. Instead, he's depicted merely flashing a smile at some very retro-looking hadrosaurs, with Corythosaurus looking particularly unimpressed. When compared with the Ceratosaurus scene, there's a greater tendency here to just lean on old palaeoart tropes - as exemplified by the weirdly beakless and tripodal hadrosaur. Rexy certainly has some suitably massive thighs on him (and that purpleish colour scheme is rather natty), but his left leg has presumably adopted some rather strange angles, and his first toes are reversed for no good reason. (Basal tyrannosauroids confirmed as arboreal perchers? Yeah, why not? What do you mean, 'no evidence whatsoever'? Quiet, you!) Meanwhile, Tsintaosaurus has a red rocket. On its head. Again. And finally...a grey brachiosaur. To Ovenden's credit, most of the animals in this book-type thing have excellent skin textures - just the right mix of pebbly scales, osteoderms and the occasional flashy spiky bits, with colour schemes that are naturalistic without being dull. The dappled patterns on this sauropod are, again, rather pretty (I think Niroot would heartily approve), but it suffers from having a very saggy, wrinkled look, probably based on extant large mammals such as the heffalump and nose-horn. It's a bit disappointing when compared with the far more convincing (and reptilian) look that he applies to other creatures, but is reflective of a trend that persisted for far, far too long. Having said that, it's interesting that Ovenden drew the nostrils further down the snout, while still depicting the nasal crest - hinting, as with the Archaeopteryx, that he had something of an intuitive grasp of certain aspects of animal anatomy. It's easy to have a chuckle at these old books (and Gryposaurus knows I've done that an awful lot over the years), but there was an accomplished illustrator at work here. That giant pacycephalosaur is still amusing, though. Tee hee.

Given that the last book I reviewed was so very bland and predictable (complete with the obligatory post-Normanpedia Sibbickisms), I was ver...

Dinosaurs might not have ruled the Earth in the 20th Century, but they knew how to stand still and bide their time for their return. In this series of snapshots by the terrific Robert E Jackson, we see statues of dinosaurs throughout the US. Some were taken at the Dinosaur Park in Rapid City, … Continue reading "Vintage Snapshots of Dinosaurs"

It Came From the 1970s! Originally published in Italy in 1971, Prehistoric Animals is part of the Privates Lives of Animals series, which ...

Now here's a curious one - a book from 1959, written by the great Roy Chapman Andrews and illustrated by Jean Zallinger. Wait, you mean Rudolph, surely? Well, no; Rudolph Zallinger may be the man behind The Age of Reptiles mural in the Peabody museum, but his wife Jean Day Zallinger is a prolific illustrator, and it shouldn't really be too surprising that she should lend her hand to a book such as this. It's strange not seeing Rudolph's name in this saurian context, but Jean is more than capable of holding her own...even if The Age of Reptiles does heavily influence some of the art here, as we shall see. This is another one sent to me by Charles Leon - thanks again Charles! Charles sent me two different covers for this one; one featuring just a Stegosaurus, with rather demonic red eyes, and the other with a Stego accompanied by some sauropods. They're serviceable, and provide an attractive splash of colour, but a little dull. I suppose it doesn't help that stegosaurs of this area inevitably end up looking very depressed, like they've just heard a Boris Johnson speech. Happily, there are much more interesting illustrations to be found within. In fact, the above illustration of a gathering of hadrosaurs ("Trachodon", of course) is so good, it's used twice. The dinosaurs may be of their time, but are well observed and proportioned with it. The foliage, meanwhile, is just gorgeous - lush, varied, and detailed. Rarely is so much attention paid to mere foliage in palaeoart of this vintage, and it really helps create an engaging, naturalistic scene. It's telling how much carefully illustrated foliage can enhance the sense of realism in a piece, even when the art style isn't strictly 'realistic' or hyper-detailed; of course, all the best palaeoartists today are well aware of this. When compared with the glorious flora in the hadrosaur scene, the chunky palm stuck behind Iguanodon here looks a little perfunctory. The animal itself, while obviously very typical of the time, at least has decently bulky, muscular arms, and a head that's the right sort of shape. Zallinger seems to have an affinity for warty, knobbly bits - as evidenced nowhere else better than in her illustration of... ...Brontosaurus, the Thunder Lizard! There's a lot more interesting detailing going on here than is typical for contemporary depictions of sauropods, and certainly more than initially meets the eye. The scaly skin effect is quite masterful, with the animal's textured hide being expertly shaded; a wonderful contrast to the often pachyderm-like skin seen on historic reconstructions. The peculiarly gnarled and knobbly head is an intriguing touch. It shows that Zallinger was viewing these beasts as real animals, inventing quirky display structures and anatomy the likes of which might not be construed from fossils. Obviously, the reconstruction as a whole simply wouldn't pass muster today (and it follows the trends of the age in seriously downplaying that fat neck), but for 1959, it's quite lovely. Not so lovely are these "strange sea creatures of long ago". I dunno - is a big turtle that strange? And why were these animals always depicted as if they were trying to escape the sea, rather than just inhabiting it? Maybe palaeoartists of old felt that these creatures were utterly alien to their conceptions of marine life, and so they felt the need to depict them as something less than fully aquatic. Or maybe it's due to being biased towards human viewpoints. Or maybe crashing waves look really cool. It's probably a pretentious essay for another time. Never mind all that, then - here's a hadrosaur! "The fingers of his small hands were joined by skin. Each hand was like a duck's foot...This dinosaur loved the water," Andrews explains. Thankfully, Zallinger ignores all this, instead depicting "Trachodon" standing alone on land, nervously glancing over its shoulder lest one of those hideous crocomurderbirds sneak up on it. Again, the skin texture is marvellous (very probably inspired by hadrosaur mummies), and the rows of larger, raised scales on the tail are a nice touch. Where Trachedmontosaurotitan goes, of course, Rexy will surely follow. This illustration is very obviously based on the Age of Reptiles version by that other Zallinger, but there are a few notable differences. The black lumps down the animal's back have been exaggerated, and the skin textures are more varied - with tougher-looking upper parts giving way to a smoother, but still wrinkled, underbelly. The arms, meanwhile, are just plain creepy. I think a lot of it has to do with the extra digits; they're also disconcertingly humanoid. Alas, poor "Trachodon" inevitably ends up as Rexy's lunch, in this very Knight-inspired illustration. This is a strikingly different depiction of Rexy - almost every small detail, from the shape of the head down to the number of fingers, is different. Even the black back lumps are gone. Meanwhile, the "Trachodon" now sports those aforementioned webbed fingers. And finally...the King of Tyrants sleeping. This Rexy more closely resembles the Knightian version, appearing relatively svelte, with chunkier arms and two fingers, as opposed to the more rotund, Godzilla-like (Rudolph) Zallinger-influenced version. Rexy might be "the most terrible animal that ever walked the Earth" according to Andrews, but he doesn't half look adorable when having a kip. "For several days he sleeps soundly. No other dinosaur dares bother him," Andrews writes. Plenty of time for John Conway to sneak up and make a few sketches. Next time: there's a whole lot more where this came from...

Originally from 1980 (with this edition arriving in 1985), the Spotter's Guide to Dinosaurs & other prehistoric animals (always important to tack on those...others) from erstwhile publishing outfit Usborne is nothing if not typical of its time...with a few twists. For you see, even in the most outwardly generic of dinosaur-a-long compendiums, there's inevitably a creature or two that the artist had a particularly quirky take on. In the case of the Spotter's Guide, it's most definitely pterosaurs. Sticking out like King Tut's dessicated thumb from an assortment of fairly dull, Bernard Robinson-inspired dinosaurs (and a lizard, or something), illustrator Bob Hersey's terrifying Zombiedactylus is an alarming hint of things to come inside. (I do like the Triceratops' displeased expression, too. D'awww.) Of course, you'll find plenty of the more conventional in this book. It is perhaps unsurprising that this Iguanodon is actually rather good for its time - after all, David Norman is credited as the author (or possibly just consultant...it's not made clear). There is something awfully peculiar going on with that pinkie, however. While everyone knows that the thumb spike evolved in order to resolve gladiatorial duels between lesser dinosaurs, whatever does the animal plan on doing with that thing? It doesn't bear thinking about. The book's sauropods are a little more strange, but certainly not exceptional for 1980. As per contemporary rules governing the depiction of dinosaurs in popular media, Apatosaurus is a fatter, shorter-tailed version of Diplodocus, and was formerly known as Brontosaurus (which is sorta true, but not really). Meanwhile, Brachiosaurus appears quite resplendent, and without a murky swamp in sight, even if there's still something a little uncanny about its wrinkle-tastic, shiny-headed appearance. Now this is more like it! Until far too recently, it was standard practice to depict all large theropod dinosaurs as being almost exactly the same, albeit with one or two distinguishing features to make it (somewhat) clear which genus was being depicted. Credit is due to Hersey for bothering to stick lacrimal horns on his Allosaurus, and for not making Megalosaurus a Neave Parker-style hunchback. However, the ultra-'70s inexplicably quadrupedal Spinosaurus and chunky, 'carnosaur' Dilophosaurus are rather laughable these days. This is particularly true of the latter, as its famous head crests appear to be attached to its neck. Naturally, Tyrannosaurus receives a page to itself (discounting that Tarbosaurus skull), and is depicted as a gloriously tubby, limb-chewing leviathan, some 14 metres long (a minor overestimate repeated in Dinosaurs! - suffice it to say that, as a child, when books gave the length of Tyrannosaurus as a mere 12 metres, I got quite upset). Of course, the tendency for tyrannosaurs to pose triumphantly over often nondescript carcasses is known from heraldic emblems and coinage found just below the K/Pg boundary. The Spotter's Guide also features a reasonable selection of small theropods, and rather presciently includes Deinocheirus under the coelurosaur banner, in spite of its huge size. While wisely opting to depict Deinocheirus as a disembodied pair of arms, thereby avoiding a speculative restoration that could prove to be disastrously wrong in the future, this spread nevertheless features one of the most bafflingly wrong illustrations of Velociraptor ever included in a serious, factual book. Sure, the long, low head is on the money, but where's the sickle claw? Why the tiny, feeble hands and fat tail? You've drawn a reasonable enough Bakkerian Deinonychus right there! Gah! Of course, if you've been knocking around this blog for a couple of years, you may well remember seeing old Veloci-wrong reach the semi-final rounds in my needlessly cruel Terrible '90s [ish] Dromaeosaur Face-Off. I was a real meanie back then. I do love the fiery colouration of the Sauronithoides here. As can be gleaned from '80s and '90s palaeoart, Saurornithoides had a crazy-eyed hatred for tiny mammals, like some sort of saurian exterminator. While Saurornithoides and the other animals depicted here would be suitably fluffinated in a modern book, there's only one place to see a feathered dinosaur in 1985... ...and that's on the Archaeopteryx page, naturally. Although the Berlin specimen has been quite beautifully drawn, the life restorations are of the primaries-attached-to-the-wrist, Sparkleraptor variety. The splayed 'roadkill' legs on the trunk-climbing beast are also a little disconcerting. Here, the text takes a turn for the cocksure - "Modern birds evolved from it," indeed! I suppose they ran out of space to clarify... Among all the dinosaur groups in this book, ankylosaurs are perhaps among the most unrecognisable when compared with modern depictions. The illustrations here harken back to a time when these animals were very poorly understood, and often restored as turtle-like, sprawling, short-tailed, no-necked monstrosities with weirdly mammalian heads. This particularly applies to poor old Euoplocephalus and Ankylosaurus. The Scelidosaurus here appears to have been inspired by a model still on show in London's Natural History Museum, and is considerably less spiky than it would be today. Bizarre as these fellows are, though, I've saved the best until last. Over the years, pterosaurs have frequently had something of an image problem. Described here as "fragile", the books of my youth (and the preceding decades) often depicted them as sickly-looking beasties with paper-thin wing membranes rendered useless by the slightest damage. They seemed less like a spectacular and highly successful group of flying animals completely unlike anything we have today, and more like Evolution's Cruellest Mistake, doomed to be superseded by the vastly superior dinosaurs as soon as the latter could be bothered to evolve feathers and take to the skies. Perhaps the nadir of this sort of thinking is in illustrations like these, which depict animals that appear to lack any musculature or internal organs whatsoever. Now, let's be fair; William Stout did it, and he was one of the most important and influential palaeoartists of the era. However, that doesn't stop these zombie-pterosaurs from being utterly terrifying. Equally terrifying is the pin-headed, nightmarish Quetzalcoatlus, identified as the 'Texas Pterosaur', although given that it hadn't even been named yet such inaccuracies can probably be forgiven. Its appearance here is also noteworthy as a very early one in a popular book. Flying back to Bald Mountain. I may well end up returning to the Spotter's Guide in future - there are plenty more old-timey illustrations to gawp at yet. Next week, however, I'm moving on to something rather different...and just as scary. Do stick around!

Another Ladybird book! I have a particular affinity for Ladybird's numerous and varied dainty hardback books, as I had a collection of them as a child (some of them inherited, which made them extra special). Prehistoric Animals and Fossils is a 1974 title from Series 651(!), which was dedicated to natural history. It may run the gamut from the Palaeozoic to the last Ice Age, but it's the Mesozoic fauna we're most interested in, and fortunately there's a pretty decent amount of it. In fact, the cover is dominated by two duelling dinosaurs, which appear to be Styracosaurus and a tyrannosaur of some sort. It's a bit of an odd choice, as many of the illustrations inside - by Robert Ayton - depict much more active, exciting-looking animals. These two look like they're going through the motions, although you've got to admire a tyrannosaur that won't let go even when it's been stabbed in the nether regions. There's also a 'wings...but with hands!' Archaeopteryx. On the other, er, hand, you've got to admire the beautifully detailed fossil sea creatures. Since it's not, lest we forget, all about dinosaurs looking all mean and cool and stabbing each other with the blood and guts, this book also features a fair amount on geology and palaeontology, both the scientific and hobbyist sides. Hence, an image of a theropod running at full pelt is juxtaposed with a fossil trackway in the modern day. The animal's depiction owes much to Neave Parker's hugely influential Megalosaurus illustration, from its peculiar hunchback (don't think too much about how the neck and shoulders work anatomically...it's a bit mind-blowing) to its equally odd, but quite adorable, tiny hands with four little piggies. Nevertheless, this is notable for showing an animal with powerful thigh muscles travelling in a real hurry, its tail well clear of the ground - pointing away from the ground, in fact. Now, I know what you're thinking and, yes, the text does explain that Dimetrodon and Stegosaurus did not live at the same time. It's still a fun scene, particularly as the Stegosaurus is providing a perfect comedy reaction. He's like, "Woah, what!?!" Again, the rearing posture is surprisingly active, and provides a wonderful contrast to all those pre-Renaissance illustrations in which it appears as if the stegosaur is pushing its head through the dirt in front of it. There are some illustrations in this book that are more akin to what one might typically expect; namely, dinosaurs standing around, looking like fat toads with monster overfed python tails, and generally being a bit brown and dull. At least Styracosaurus is sedately munching plants here, rather than goring someone in the privates. Polacanthus is notably sporting its old-school, Neave Parker-esque armour configuration, which prevailed well into the '90s. It's inevitable that Tyrannosaurus will show up at some point, so here it is, battling Triceratops amidst a wonderfully energetic swirl of colour. While T. rex, rather oddly, resembles a slightly modified version of the earlier megalosaur-beast, I am still very fond of this illustration - there's a real energy to it, and the sparring animals appear convincingly engaged in battle, rather than the ceratopsian being launched at a tyrannosaur standing on one leg while pulling up the edges of its frilly skirt and shrieking. There's also a sauropod (and its skeleton), inevitably identified as "Brontosaurus". It's a bit boring, though, so never mind that. Look, marine reptiles! If you're not going to have a mosasaur and a plesiosaur fighting then, well, what's the point of your prehistoric animal book? Again, there's a wonderful energy and fury about this scene, with the mosasaur (complete with fancy frilly bits) lunging ferociously at its preposterously long-necked foe. The foaming, churning sea is excellently painted. According to the book's caption, the calm-looking ichthyosaur is 'awaiting results', presumably because it has £10 on the mosasaur down at Ladbrokes. I mentioned the book's hobbyist bent earlier, and here it encourages the hoarding of specimens in your private collection, where you can keep them away from the grubby hands of the scientific community and gloat like a palaeontological Scrooge McDuck. (I'm kidding, of course - it's just suggesting that the reader make a nice display of the bits and pieces they find on holiday in the West Country). I remember reading this book as a child and being suitably inspired; at one point, I did indeed have my favourite specimens on show with corresponding informative labels (although most of mine were obtained from such places as the gift shop in Wisbech Museum). It's a charming picture in a genteel sort of way. For crying out loud, though, please don't go thinking that all museum curators are the genteel sort, should you meet any... In a similar vein, here we see two people in appropriate period dress assembling a brontosaur diorama. Model dinosaurs being a particular love of mine, this is one of my favourite illustrations in the book; being beautifully painted doesn't do it any harm, either. This illustration accompanies a page suggesting that the reader set up a 'fossil club' with some of their fourth-form school chums, what ho. Actually, that's not fair - it's the way that this book completely avoids patronising its young audience that makes it so charming and inspiring. There's the sense that this is a world that you could be part of, even if you're only knee high to a grasshopper. And finally...it's Leonardo da Vinci. Many thanks to Dominic Murray for letting me borrow this one! You're the best. I'll send you a nice card.

by Peggy Parish, art by Arnold Lobel

Last time around, we had a look at various illustrations of theropods from 1977’s A natural history of Dinosaurs (this edition being from 1978), authored by Richard Moody and involving an ass…

Now here's a curious one - a book from 1959, written by the great Roy Chapman Andrews and illustrated by Jean Zallinger. Wait, you mean Rudolph, surely? Well, no; Rudolph Zallinger may be the man behind The Age of Reptiles mural in the Peabody museum, but his wife Jean Day Zallinger is a prolific illustrator, and it shouldn't really be too surprising that she should lend her hand to a book such as this. It's strange not seeing Rudolph's name in this saurian context, but Jean is more than capable of holding her own...even if The Age of Reptiles does heavily influence some of the art here, as we shall see. This is another one sent to me by Charles Leon - thanks again Charles! Charles sent me two different covers for this one; one featuring just a Stegosaurus, with rather demonic red eyes, and the other with a Stego accompanied by some sauropods. They're serviceable, and provide an attractive splash of colour, but a little dull. I suppose it doesn't help that stegosaurs of this area inevitably end up looking very depressed, like they've just heard a Boris Johnson speech. Happily, there are much more interesting illustrations to be found within. In fact, the above illustration of a gathering of hadrosaurs ("Trachodon", of course) is so good, it's used twice. The dinosaurs may be of their time, but are well observed and proportioned with it. The foliage, meanwhile, is just gorgeous - lush, varied, and detailed. Rarely is so much attention paid to mere foliage in palaeoart of this vintage, and it really helps create an engaging, naturalistic scene. It's telling how much carefully illustrated foliage can enhance the sense of realism in a piece, even when the art style isn't strictly 'realistic' or hyper-detailed; of course, all the best palaeoartists today are well aware of this. When compared with the glorious flora in the hadrosaur scene, the chunky palm stuck behind Iguanodon here looks a little perfunctory. The animal itself, while obviously very typical of the time, at least has decently bulky, muscular arms, and a head that's the right sort of shape. Zallinger seems to have an affinity for warty, knobbly bits - as evidenced nowhere else better than in her illustration of... ...Brontosaurus, the Thunder Lizard! There's a lot more interesting detailing going on here than is typical for contemporary depictions of sauropods, and certainly more than initially meets the eye. The scaly skin effect is quite masterful, with the animal's textured hide being expertly shaded; a wonderful contrast to the often pachyderm-like skin seen on historic reconstructions. The peculiarly gnarled and knobbly head is an intriguing touch. It shows that Zallinger was viewing these beasts as real animals, inventing quirky display structures and anatomy the likes of which might not be construed from fossils. Obviously, the reconstruction as a whole simply wouldn't pass muster today (and it follows the trends of the age in seriously downplaying that fat neck), but for 1959, it's quite lovely. Not so lovely are these "strange sea creatures of long ago". I dunno - is a big turtle that strange? And why were these animals always depicted as if they were trying to escape the sea, rather than just inhabiting it? Maybe palaeoartists of old felt that these creatures were utterly alien to their conceptions of marine life, and so they felt the need to depict them as something less than fully aquatic. Or maybe it's due to being biased towards human viewpoints. Or maybe crashing waves look really cool. It's probably a pretentious essay for another time. Never mind all that, then - here's a hadrosaur! "The fingers of his small hands were joined by skin. Each hand was like a duck's foot...This dinosaur loved the water," Andrews explains. Thankfully, Zallinger ignores all this, instead depicting "Trachodon" standing alone on land, nervously glancing over its shoulder lest one of those hideous crocomurderbirds sneak up on it. Again, the skin texture is marvellous (very probably inspired by hadrosaur mummies), and the rows of larger, raised scales on the tail are a nice touch. Where Trachedmontosaurotitan goes, of course, Rexy will surely follow. This illustration is very obviously based on the Age of Reptiles version by that other Zallinger, but there are a few notable differences. The black lumps down the animal's back have been exaggerated, and the skin textures are more varied - with tougher-looking upper parts giving way to a smoother, but still wrinkled, underbelly. The arms, meanwhile, are just plain creepy. I think a lot of it has to do with the extra digits; they're also disconcertingly humanoid. Alas, poor "Trachodon" inevitably ends up as Rexy's lunch, in this very Knight-inspired illustration. This is a strikingly different depiction of Rexy - almost every small detail, from the shape of the head down to the number of fingers, is different. Even the black back lumps are gone. Meanwhile, the "Trachodon" now sports those aforementioned webbed fingers. And finally...the King of Tyrants sleeping. This Rexy more closely resembles the Knightian version, appearing relatively svelte, with chunkier arms and two fingers, as opposed to the more rotund, Godzilla-like (Rudolph) Zallinger-influenced version. Rexy might be "the most terrible animal that ever walked the Earth" according to Andrews, but he doesn't half look adorable when having a kip. "For several days he sleeps soundly. No other dinosaur dares bother him," Andrews writes. Plenty of time for John Conway to sneak up and make a few sketches. Next time: there's a whole lot more where this came from...

35 Vintage Prehistoric Animal Illustrations Dinosaur sculls, skeletons, mammoths and some other illustrations. Click on screenshots to see all objects. Zip file includes CS1 compatible .AI file CS1 compatible .EPS file

Allow me to admit the following from the start: this entry should probably be entitled 'Vintage Dinosaur Art: Neave Parker', for it is Parker's monochromatic art that is used to liven up this rather unassuming little book dating from 1974. However, this museum-sanctioned book - note that the Natural History Museum was still officially a department of the British Museum at the time - offers plenty of fascinating tidbits in the text, including some commentary on the creatures as depicted in Parker's work, which makes it very interesting in itself. The 'frontispiece' is Parker's Triceratops, standing alone, drinking from a puddle. Parker's work is technically pretty impressive, even if he was obviously heavily influenced by Zdenek Burian. These days, however, his name inevitably conjures up images of hopelessly obsolete restorations, a good few of which are included here. The first edition of this book was published in 1962, a year after Parker's death. By the time this edition was published the 'Dinosaur Renaissance' was already well underway, and yet you wouldn't know it from reading this book. (One could almost see today's displaying of scaly, bunny-handed dromaeosaurs at the museum as a continuation of this tradition.) Prof Swinton of the University of Toronto - the author - espouses a lot of pre-Dino Renaissance thinking. Perhaps most peculiarly to modern audiences, he's pretty damn sure that 'the Dinosauria' is a paraphyletic group, that is it unites animals (in the Saurischia and Ornithischia) that do not share a common ancestor. This was actually a commonly held belief for some decades. There's the usual sauropod weirdness too, with the animals described as being simply too large to possibly be terrestrial, instead sticking to water bodies of a convenient depth (as in the above Parker painting). Quite why so many people failed to notice the columnar, graviportal legs and scream "THIS IS TOTALLY BONKERS!" for so long, I don't know. Parker's theropods are an interesting bunch. Generally they follow the pattern of being ponderous and bloated - his Tyrannosaurus is particularly Godzilla-like - but some, like his Megalosaurus, are shown taking long strides with horizontal backs and elevated tails. Still, Parker would had to have been pretty wild to match the oddness present in the text here, particularly when it comes to the author's ideas of what toothlessness meant for theropod groups like the ornithomimosaurs. What, you thought it was just because they evolved to enjoy a varied diet? Foolishness! Being all gummy is actually "a symptom of an aged and worn-out stock, already ripe for extinction." While Swinton acknowledges that theropods would have walked with their tails aloft (for balance), he also imagines them having to have lengthy resting periods like lizards, and sniffily dismisses the "remarkable agility" that the animals display in some of those new-fangled restorations. Parker's man-in-a-suit, leathery Tyrannosaurus is presumably just recuperating after sluggishly plodding along in pursuit of some hadrosaur meat. Nevertheless, Prof Swinton envisages Iguanodon moving bipedally "at some speed" when not in a tripod resting position (as depicted by Parker, below, no doubt strongly influenced by Burian). He also refutes the idea, brought to memorable life by Parker (below), that Hypsilophodon was arboreal - envisaging it too as being fast-moving and terrestrial. Parker's perching Hypsilophodon seems like an odd inclusion, then, and nowadays it's viewed as one of the classic wacky, misguided restorations of the pre-Dino Renaissance era. In the end, though, in spite of a few modern ideas breaking through, this remains a book solidly pre-Dino Renaissance in outlook. I've already mentioned that Swinton thought the ornithomimosaurs' toothlessness was down to 'bad genetic stock'. At a time before the 'asteroid theory' became widespread and accepted, Swinton evokes 'phylogeronty' (supposedly, the decline of clades through old age) as a possible explanation for the K/Pg extinction - not just for dinosaurs, but for pterosaurs and marine reptiles too, citing the examples of Pteranodon and, utterly bafflingly given its age, Ophthalmosaurus. When it comes to the ceratopsians, Swinton attributes their decorative frills and horns to "hormone superfluity", noting that "it is significant that the Ceratopsia were among the last of the dinosaurs" (in spite of the fact that the clade lasted tens of millions of years). These ideas seem laughable now, but in 1974 were deemed worthy enough to appear in a museum-endorsed publication. To conclude then - blimey, a lot's changed in 40 years. Here's a Parker painting of the obscure nodosaur Acanthopolis. Enjoy.

Onwards with the second part of our exploration of this frequently unsettling book. Do take a look at part 1 and David's 2010 post on the artist (George Solonevich) for more background. Dinosaurs and more Dinosaurs might boast a significant number of relatively obscure beasts when compared with similar books, but that doesn't mean it shies away from the staples. Here, for example, we have an Iguanodon, easily identified by its approving hand gestures. There's something particularly peculiar about the head on this beast - it seems to have borrowed the head of a theropod from a more sober book (in DaMD, it would have dozens of moray-like teeth and/or a snaking tongue). The oddly humanoid proportions of the forelimbs are, of course, entirely in keeping with contemporary depictions of the animal. All in all, this one isn't too 'out there'; it's not like it's scaling a tree trunk, flicking out a lizardy tongue and brandishing a feathered tail, for example. Yeah, you saw that one coming, I know. In any case, Hypsilophodon is hardly known for bringing the crazy; the poor little creature is normally depicted scurrying around (or running hastily away from) much larger, more awesomebro species. Sure, there was the infamous 'tree kangaroo' Neave Parker depiction, but even then it was just standing around, looking suitably placid and harmless. Leave it to Solonevich to make even this most innocuous of animals into a creeping, crawling nightbeast with many-jointed limbs, a feathered (or is that beaver-like?) tail and Venom's tongue. By comparison, the gangly, vertical Ornithomimus on the right looks very conventional indeed, and there is something quite beautiful about its lovingly 'sculpted' legs. Speaking of the conventional versus the very unconventional, the majority of the book's ankylosaurs follow the era's rather dull tendency to produce squat, short-tailed, no-necked armadillo-turtles. This more unusual depiction, then, is surely to be welcomed, even if it looks still more outlandish. The bony nodules are superbly painted - it's almost possible to get a tangible sense of how rough this animal's hide is - but I'm sure you're nevertheless wondering what on Earth this thing is supposed to be. Well, it's Pinacosaurus (here identified as Syrmosaurus). Hey, at least it's got a nice long tail, right? Now here's a fun exercise in pointless hypothetical alterna-history - what if, just as Waterhouse Hawkins was sculpting the mighty Crystal Palace monstrosities, someone had tripped over a hadrosaur skull weathering out of a hillside somewhere? What would have happened had Hawkins hurriedly incorporated it into his dino designs? I like to think that the result would have looked something like the above. I'm particularly fond of the melty feet and hugely thick neck and tail. Magnificent stuff. While the above Anatosaurus (aka Anatotitan, aka Edmontosaurus) is furnished with the full-mega-portly-body treatment, only the head of Pachycephalosaurus is shown. There's a good reason for this, of course; Pachycephalosaurus isn't known from very much else, so any full-body reconstruction would be subject to a great amount of speculation, and might end up looking a bit freaky some decades down the line. I love its angry little face. Bless. If you want marginocephalians in all their glory, you'll have to consult the ceratopsian pages. The above animal has a masterfully textured toad body. Somehow, it's ended up with the (not all that bad, for the time) head of a Styracosaurus. I'm sure it's a mask. Of course, bring in the ceratopsians, and you also have to present their perpetual foes. Opposite Styracosaurus we have the frightful Gorgosaurus, a cross between a hen, a snake and a Cornish pasty. The character that Solonevich brings to this hunchbacked killer pastry is fantastic; note also the way in which the viewer's eye is expertly drawn to that hideous, bristling maw. Nevertheless, there's only one animal we could possibly end on... Disappointingly, Solonevich's Tyrannosaurus isn't particularly unusual for the time; there are definite shades of both Neave Parker and, especially, Zdenek Burian. This Rexy is a dead ringer for Burian's monochrome Gorgosaurus, in particular, right down to the gleaming, greasy skin textures. What the prey is intended to represent isn't mentioned. Dave Hone noted that its head looks remarkably like those on contemporary reconstructions of small pterosaurs like Rhamphorynchus; the combination of this mismatched head, extremely thin skin-flap neck and leggy bipedal body is a bit of a mystery. We can only assume that, as with so many of the other illustrations in this book, Solonevich just thought it looked pretty damn...interesting. And it certainly does.

Have you thought much about Corythosaurus recently? No? Well, no one seems to care so much about Corythosaurus these days, do they? It's all, "Shantungosaurus this" and "Olorotitan that". Back in the 1950s, though, Corythosaurus was the talk of the town, and so it's only natural that Jean Zallinger illustrated it for the remarkably good In the Days of the Dinosaurs (do read Part 1 if you haven't already). Of course, it's messing about on the river. Again, this illustration shows that Zallinger was paying a greater-than-usual amount of attention to the animal's anatomy; note the quite precise way the skull is drawn, and the particular curve of the spine over the shoulders. I wouldn't mind betting that it's largely based on the famous specimen on display in the AMNH (AMNH 5240). Andrews devotes a chapter of the book to "Dinosaurs with Armor [sic]", although rather than being a section dedicated to thyreophorans, it instead concerns various distantly related animals that evolved pointy bits with which to defend themselves from predators. As Andrews puts it: "For thousands of years the smaller dinosaurs were eaten by the bigger ones. They were eaten for breakfast, lunch, or dinner - whenever they were caught." This raises the (no doubt intentionally) amusing image of dinosaurs with set mealtimes, although lacking convenient supermarkets to visit. In any case, the first of these great armoured brutes to appear in the book is Stegosaurus (above), in an illustration that is as beautifully shaded as any of the others, but very of its time. I do like the rows of small scutes along the animal's flanks, much as the static, hump-backed appearance of the animal is all too predictable. Ankylosaurus appears too, of course, in classic super-squat, rather short-tailed guise. It's very adorable. I can't help but be drawn to the silhouetted pterosaur in the top left - it seems altogether sleeker and pointier looking than your typical background pteranodont. Triceratops is up next, looking...rather interesting. The peculiar, semicircular, fanned-out appearance of the frill is shared with Rudolph Zallinger's The Age of Reptiles depiction. Somehow, though, Jean Zallinger's illustration manages to make the animal look even more corpulent - it's probably that vein-like skin fold on the belly, and the especially fat tail. (As an aside, the contrasting skin texture of the tail does make it almost look like a monstrous parasitic worm has inserted itself up where the sun don't shine.) I do think the shading on this one is especially lovely, serving to highlight the very many interesting contours of the face, where the skin appears to adhere to the underlying bone very closely. This approach (along with the resulting lizardy lips) was very popular back in the day, fell out of favour somewhat, but is now being given a second look. In some areas, 'shrink wrapping' of the face might be justified if the bone texture suggests it. Why yes, I have been following what Mark Witton's been up to recently. Naturally, it's Monoclonius that shores up the ceratopsian team in the Armoured Dinosaurs category. It's another one of those slightly dubious genera that's fallen by the wayside, although I'll forever remember it as being the cute blue fellow with the glassy yellow eyes. In any case, this illustration looks awfully familiar to me, but I just can't quite put my finger on it. The tail seems to be emerging in a bit of an odd place on this one, although that might just be an issue of perspective. It's also interesting to note that the toes are more 'separated' here, as opposed to the more elephantine feet on Triceratops - they're actually a much better match for how ceratopsian feet really look. It may be some combination of lack of information on Triceratops at the time with the expectation of how such a huge animal 'should' look. Certainly, I think it's the latter that's resulted in the trope persisting until very recently. This being a book written by Roy Chapman Andrews Himself, Protoceratops does of course appear, although outside the "Dinosaurs with Armor" chapter. It's a very typical portrayal of a beast squatting over a tightly-packed nest. Now here's an idea for a throwaway gag in Jurassic World 2: It Could Have Been Worse, John: a shot featuring dozens of caged Protoceratops, crammed together like battery hens, laying endless eggs onto a conveyor belt. You can have that one on me, Universal. But I digress. This illustration notably includes the wee teeth in the front of the mouth, so often missing from contemporary (and even more modern) depictions of this animal. And the tree in the background is well done. Love a good tree, me. Naturally, Protoceratops is featured in a chapter that details Andrews' exploits in Mongolia. Not only is Andrews' story a ripping yarn in whichever book it appears, it also gives Zallinger the chance to illustrate some properly stunning landscapes. Based on the above image, I can only wish that she had included a backdrop like this in some of her dinosaur illustrations - they would have been properly stunning. Stick a tiny dinosaur somewhere at the foot of this rocky outcrop, and you'd have people like me stroking their chins thoughtfully and complimenting the beautiful composition. But alas, it wasn't to be. Andrews set out on his Mongolia expedition in 1922, apparently with a convoy of eight old-time motor cars. I'm grateful to Zallinger for illustrating this, as to modern eyes it looks absolutely crazy; like a parade of veteran charabancs, overloaded with kit, attempting to traverse terrain more suited to a well-beaten 4x4, or indeed a camel train. What a wonderful image. And finally...the book's endpapers feature a very familiar-looking Bronto, apparently modelled on The Age of Reptiles mural, disdainful look and all. Still, the vegetation (what little there is) is again very well drawn, and I continue to be impressed by the very subtle scaly skin texture, where so many others apparently gave up and just made their sauropods look like completely smooth-skinned blimps. Having (I must confess) not been aware of Jean Zallinger's work before I wrote this post, I now want to seek out more of it. Lovely job (and thanks again to Charles Leon for sending me the scans). Coming up next: TetZooCon! Again!

In our last look at the Album of Dinosaurs, we established that it was a beautifully illustrated book, thoroughly out-of-date scientifically for the most part, but lively and occasionally slightly silly enough to be very entertaining. It features its fair share of Daft Old PalaeoArt Tropes (or DOPATs, as they perhaps shouldn't be known), including any number of animals living an aquatic lifestyle that they don't appear eminently suited to. As far as DOPATs go, everyone remembers the snorkelling sauropod as the poster boy of pre-Dino Renaissance wrongness. However, just as prevalent back in the day were web-fingered, amphibious hadrosaurs. Borne of a misinterpreted skin impression and a far too literal comparison with ducks, no dinosaur book was complete without a hadrosaur swimming party. It's not to say that hadrosaurs couldn't or didn't swim, of course, but the idea that they were adapted for an aquatic life and primarily fed (with their packed dental batteries) on soft water plants is pretty silly indeed. Nevertheless, there's something quite lovely about Rod Ruth's illustration; I think it's again in the composition, and the graceful arc of the hadrosaur's body. Let's not leave the sauropods out of it, though. This rather unusual brachiosaur would be none too happy about that. There is an admirable attempt made in the Album to flesh the Mesozoic world out around its dinosaur stars. As such, we are treated to plenty of illustrations in which the landscape is packed with foliage, and small animals go about their own business (when they're not escaping the attentions of some goggling theropod). The Struthiomimus illustration stands alongside the Compsognathus piece (see part 1) in having some gorgeous greenery, even if it's not as interesting compositionally. Just as with the Compsognathus, the animals are notable for their Knightian weedy muscles, particularly on the thighs. Although it can be considered something of a DOPAT now, the ever-nesting-Protoceratops did make sense at the time, even if it eventually became a very tiresome cliché. Ruth's take is unusual in that the Protoceratops adults, which are dotted at different levels around the landscape like they're posing for a moody album cover, don't appear to give a flying Zalambdalestes about their tiny, squishy offspring. Won't somebody think of the children? Quite a few millions of years down the line we come to Triceratops, the rockingest ceratopsian of them all (and also the last). The scenery here is wonderful; Ruth evokes an unusually chilly atmosphere, and it's almost possible to feel that brisk wind on one's face. The animals themselves aren't too bad for the time, but are still weirdly inconsistent. The individual on the left appears to have a horn emerging from directly behind its eye, while the head of the middle animal seems to be turning into a potato crisp. There's also a niggling sense of the scale not being quite right - those must be some seriously bloody massive bushes back there. Did you notice T. rex sneaking around at the back, too? Do you think he'll get away with that? No chance. So far, I've only mentioned this book's text (by Tom McGowen) in passing, but it deserves more attention. Each showcased dinosaur is the subject of a factual rundown, naturally, but also a wee narrative detailing its exploits on a typical day. So, Apatosaurus vacuums pondweed like a chump, while Allosaurus flashes its glinting teeth and twirls its moustache while cackling loudly to itself. It's all gloriously dramatic and rather breathless stuff, and like any good writer of children's factual books, McGowen is notably bloodthirsty. "The horned dinosaur slams into the flesh eater, jerking its head upward savagely so that its two long horns rip deep into the tyrannosaur's belly! The impact lifts the flesh eater off its feet and hurls it backward to sprawl on the ground. Moving forward quickly, the triceratops [sic] jabs its horn again and again into the fallen tyrannosaur's body." That's one stab-happy Triceratops. The text is further accompanied by smaller, monochrome illustrations that frequently continue the 'story' started in the main image. Naturally, Triceratops is depicted being fired out of a cannon towards a rather limber T. rex. At least it's not ambushing the tyrannosaur in the shower, I suppose. Happily, T. rex is allowed to have his own way at least some of the time (for in the tradition of pre-1980s dinosaur books, he is surely male). Here, his yoga practice has paid off as he manages to flip over a no-neck ankylofreak like so many pointy pancakes, although that right leg still looks like it would take some work to pop back in. As McGowen explains, presumably while salivating, if an ankylosaur were ever to be inverted like this, then "in an instant the flesh eater's teeth would have been savagely tearing into the unprotected flesh!" He really had a thing for 'flesh'...so to speak. One of my favourites of the monochrome illustrations is this one, depicting Stegosaurus toppling Ceratosaurus. As noted above, it's a charming continuation of the scenario depicted in the main illustration, as well as being a pleasing piece in itself. Another of my favourites, but for quite a different reason, is this 'Iguanodon forefoot'. Quite where Ruth found the inspiration for this mutant aberration, I'm not quite sure; it's like a diseased lizard wielding a machete blade. But I don't want to end on a downer, so here's a wonderful addition to the 'Ornitholestes catching a bird' DOPAT. Ruth's is unusual in that his Ornitholestes hasn't quite caught up with its prey, although it's still stretching out its adorable little arms in anticipation. Just brilliant. Next week: something else entirely!

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